Department of Education, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Behav Res Methods. 2024 Dec;56(8):8658-8676. doi: 10.3758/s13428-024-02496-z. Epub 2024 Sep 13.
Finding a reliable and objective measure of individual differences in mental imagery across sensory modalities is difficult, with measures relying on self-report scales or focusing on one modality alone. Based on the idea that mental imagery involves multimodal sensorimotor simulations, a mental comparison task (MCT) was developed across three studies and tested on adults (n = 96, 345, and 448). Analyses examined: (a) the internal consistency of the MCT, (b) whether lexical features of the MCT stimuli (word length and frequency) predicted performance, (c) whether the MCT related to two widely used self-report scales, (d) response latencies and accuracies across the visual, auditory, and tactile modalities, and (e) whether MCT performance was independent of processing speed. The MCT showed evidence of reliability and validity. Responses were fastest and most accurate for the visual modality, followed by the auditory and tactile. However, consistent with the idea that self-report questionnaires index a different aspect of mental imagery, the MCT showed minimal correlations with self-report imagery. Finally, relations between MCT scales remained strong after controlling for processing speed. Findings are discussed in relation to current understanding and measurement of mental imagery.
在不同感觉模式下，找到一种可靠且客观的个体差异衡量方法是困难的，因为现有的方法依赖于自我报告量表或仅专注于单一模式。基于心理意象涉及多模态感觉运动模拟的观点，开发了一种心理比较任务（MCT），并在三个研究中对成年人（n=96、345 和 448）进行了测试。分析考察了：（a）MCT 的内部一致性，（b）MCT 刺激的词汇特征（词长和频率）是否预测表现，（c）MCT 是否与两个广泛使用的自我报告量表相关，（d）视觉、听觉和触觉模式下的反应时和准确率，以及（e）MCT 表现是否独立于处理速度。MCT 表现出可靠性和有效性的证据。对于视觉模式，反应最快且最准确，其次是听觉和触觉。然而，与自我报告问卷索引心理意象的不同方面的观点一致，MCT 与自我报告意象的相关性最小。最后，在控制处理速度后，MCT 量表之间的关系仍然很强。研究结果在与当前对心理意象的理解和测量的关系方面进行了讨论。
